Street Kings Offers Hollow Hackery

By Dan Hudak

Although Keanu Reeves’ flat affect works for him in Street Kings, very little else in the film does.

“We’re the police, we can do whatever the hell we want,” says Detective Tom Ludlow in Street Kings, a cold-hearted, often idiotic drama set within the torrid confines of LAPD corruption. It does have some entertaining moments, but at times director David Ayer’s (Harsh Times) movie has such a muddled story that it’s comically bad.

Keanu Reeves plays Ludlow, a down-on-his-luck, self-hating widower with a drinking problem who works undercover with an LAPD vice squad. In the opening sequence, he shoots up a home full of Korean pimps and pedophiles, which sets the precedent for the film to be offensive to all Oriental people later on. But the story is (surprisingly) not about the LAPD’s racism. Instead it follows Ludlow as he investigates who murdered his former partner, Terrence Washington (Terry Crews), which is interesting because the two did not get along and Washington had apparently ratted him out to internal affairs.

The three other members of Ludlow’s squad tell him to back off the investigation, knowing full well that their boss, Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), will cover up any wrongdoings. One thing that Clady (Jay Mohr), Santos (Amaury Nolasco) and DeMille (John Corbett) do not anticipate, however, is how persistent Ludlow and homicide detective Paul Diskant (Chris Evans) will be in pursuing the case, nor are they really aware of what Captain Biggs (Hugh Laurie from House, in an underwritten role) in internal affairs knows about their unit.

Watching the movie, one gets the distinct impression that numerous script revisions have rendered the story incomprehensible. Writers James Ellroy (who wrote the novel on which it’s based), Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss have taken an intriguing tale about police corruption and turned it into a story in which Ludlow isn’t sure why he’s doing what he’s doing. And because his motivation is never clear, everything that follows suffers and lacks purpose.

Oddly, what you expect Street Kings to do well (gritty urban street drama) is poorly rendered, while what you expect to be bad (Reeves’ acting) is actually rather serviceable. The fact that Ludlow is a cold, emotionless cop undoubtedly helps Reeves in that he doesn’t have to show a wide range of emotion; all that’s required of him is to look tough, punch hard and not ruin things by overdoing it. We don’t get the requisite “whoa” that he’s all but abandoned in recent years, but it’s nice to see him handle drama reasonably well.

Ayer has contributed to a number of L.A.-based dramas with a 24 feel, and Street Kings is by far the worst of the bunch. If Ayer’s other films — besides Harsh Times, he wrote Dark Blue, SWAT and Training Day — represent a gradual moral decay within the populace of Los Angeles, Street Kings is little more than an added insult to the already besmirched public perception of the LAPD. Worse, it’s more confusing than it is entertaining — a cardinal sin when the bottom line (as it always is) is box office receipts, not social commentary.

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